Paxton and the Gypsy Blade (24 page)

“My God!” Tom whispered in awe.

Adriana stopped in front of him and curtsied. “Such a gift you have given me, dear Thomas,” she said in a voice as soft as a cat's purr. “The gown is lovely. Maybe too much so for me, no?”

“Hardly,” Tom said, and though he tried to think of something else to add, the sight of her had momentarily robbed him of speech.

The dining room was abuzz with conversation and the soft clink of utensils when they entered. Adriana on his arm, his heart swelling with pride, Tom followed the maître d' through the hushed and envious whispers of the other diners to their table. The waiting sommelier tipped some wine into Tom's glass and stood back. The color was like rubies shot through with moonlight, the taste light and subtle, hinting of romantic evenings spent on the terrace of a château hidden on a French hillside. “Very good,” he said with a nod of approval.

The sommelier poured, and withdrew discreetly.

Tom raised his glass, Adriana hers, and the crystal chimed as the two met. “To our week,” Adriana said.

“To our week,” Tom repeated—and drank, with the unsettling impression that she had left a great deal unsaid.

A moonlit floor. A flickering candle. Slippers. A frock coat draped carelessly over the French love seat. And there, near the bed, a mound of brilliant satin and tiny white bows. Bed covers in disarray. Flesh joined—sweet joining—in the moonlight. The bed trembles and the flesh separates, melds anew, becomes two, becomes one. His body drives down into hers, pours its strength and fierce heat into hers, cries to hers, shudders while she claws his back and sobs and clings to him, surrenders to the final svelte plunge, to the wondrous sighing, subsiding of the fire, the ebbing of passion's moonlit silver tide.

They lay side by side, flesh warm and naked and close, as a chorus of insects outside filled the night air with song. Adriana breathed deeply, inhaling and exhaling slowly to prepare herself for the next critical minutes. “Thomas?” she said, at last composed.

“Ummm?”

“Will you listen to me?”

Something in her voice alarmed him, and Tom turned his head so he could see her. “Of course.”

“I was going to tell you earlier, but couldn't.”

His alarm became cold certainty that she was going to say something he didn't want to hear.

“You've picked a fine time.”

“No time was the right time. Will you listen to me now?” She had relived the night of Giuseppe's death a thousand times. Every excruciating detail was clear in her mind, but putting the scene into words was a different matter. She spoke haltingly at first, starting with the life of a Gypsy and describing the small towns scattered across the English countryside. She spoke of one town and one night in particular, and of the face of Trevor Bliss, menacing in the firelight. Of the unexpected pistol shot, and of the warm blood, sticky on her hands, as Giuseppe died in her arms. And finally, of her vow to kill Trevor Bliss, of her pursuit of him, which had led—so far—to this room, this night, this man at her side.

“I don't understand,” Tom said after the silence had dragged on for over a minute. “I'm sorry for your brother, and God knows I sympathize with your desire to kill this Bliss fellow, but I don't see what any of it has to do with me.”

“Trevor Bliss,” Adriana said, “is now the captain of the sloop of war
Druid
, which is stationed at … San Sebastian.”

“Ohhhh!” Tom said, the pieces falling into place.

Adriana raised herself on one elbow, lifted the amulet from Tom's chest, and held it, gleaming like a miniature sun in the candlelight, in her palm. “I told you I'd seen this in my dreams.” She spoke rapidly, as if speed would override any possible objection and convince him she should sail with him. “When we first met that night, something told me you were special, and when I saw this.… At first, I was certain you'd come to help me avenge Giuseppe. Later, I doubted; I thought that my dreams had thrown us together as man and woman. But then … then when you told me about your boys and San Sebastian, I knew, I tell you, dear Thomas—” She clenched the amulet in her fist and pounded lightly on his chest, as if to drive the message into his heart. “I knew that we were meant to go together. We must obey our destinies.”

“Oh, Jesus, Adriana.” He held her hand pressed against his chest and tried to think. With any kind of luck at all, the
Druid
and Trevor Bliss would be on patrol far from San Sebastian when they struck. And if Bliss was nearby, what would Tom do? Allow, even assist, a passenger aboard a Paxton ship to murder a British naval officer? By the time word got back to England, no Paxton ship would be safe anywhere in the world. And what of Adriana? The teeming streets of London were one thing, but a single girl stalking Bliss on a small island was quite another. He would more likely be taking her to her own death.

“I can't,” he said, sick at heart.

“You
can!
Fate has—”

“Fate is nothing! For God's sake, Adriana, they'll be waiting for us as it is. I'll be lucky as hell to get my boys out of there and to escape unscathed. And in the middle of all that, I'm supposed to help execute a British naval officer who just happens to command an eighteen-gun sloop of war?”

“Just leave me there, is all I ask,” Adriana pleaded. “You don't have to help.”

“No. It's out of the question.”

“Thomas! I'm begging you!”

“And I'm telling you
no
, damn it,” Tom snapped, rolling away from her and out of the bed. “If that's what you wanted, you came to the wrong place. I'm sorry about your brother, but—”

“Sorry!” Adriana hissed. She rose to her knees and crouched, facing him, like an animal. “Your sons have been kidnapped. If I say I'm sorry, does that heal your wound? Is that enough for you?”

“That's not the point.” All those words of endearment, those tainted kisses! “There's no place for you on the
Cassandra.
”

Eerily calm, Adriana settled back on her haunches. “This bed,” she said, touching the sheets still warm from their lovemaking, “With you. I have given myself to you, and will again as often as you wish. For this, you will take me with you.”

“So that's it,” Tom said listlessly. He'd been used and deceived. He'd sullied Jenny's memory and himself. “All my shiny gold pieces weren't enough to buy you, you said.” His voice was dull, his heart hurt. “And yet you sold yourself for a boat ride.”

Her body glowing in the candlelight, Adriana climbed out of the bed. “Yes,” she said calmly, kicking her new gown aside and reaching for her more simple blouse and skirt. She hadn't meant it to come out the way it had, but he had turned her words against her, and would pay. “With you, or with any man who would take me to San Sebastian.”

“One week,” Tom said, watching her dress. “To our week! What a lovely toast. But I'll say this.” His voice was brittle with sarcasm. “You sure picked one hell of a way to honor your brother's death.”

The pain written on his face was terrible to see, but she had to keep pressing, or she would never be free of her brother's ghost. “Will you take me or not?”

“No,” said Tom, looking away from her.

“Very well.” She stalked to the door and stood, nearly invisible, in the shadows. “If you won't have me, the men at the Cottonmouth will be glad to see their Adriana has returned. Bon voyage, Thomas Gunn Paxton.”

The hour was late, the hotel quiet as a tomb. Slamming the door behind her, Adriana walked quickly down the hall, ran down the stairs, and woke the night porter as she banged through the front doors. He'd refused to take her. Refused! Stunned, unable to believe she'd been thwarted once again, she stumbled down the street toward the French Quarter.

And then, suddenly, the possibility dawning on her like a blaze of light, she whirled about and began to run, not toward the Quarter and the Cottonmouth, but toward the shipyard—where the
Cassandra
waited.

CHAPTER XIII

Tom spent a sleepless night, and by morning was in no mood for pleasantries. Thirty minutes after settling his bill at the Hotel de Paris, he stalked up the gangplank and brushed past Maurice without so much as a by-your-leave. Maurice took note of his friend's foul mood, but reserved inquiry. The
Cassandra
was preparing to set sail, and he had more than enough to occupy his time.

The ship was a beehive of activity. Most of the crew was busy tightening the new lines that had stretched overnight. Larkin had decided that since there was no cargo, he wanted more weight forward, and a crew of dockworkers, each bringing a hundred-pound cast-iron ingot, was filing on and off board.

“Captain?”

“What?” Tom snapped, anxious to seclude himself in his cabin.

Larkin, with a distinguished-looking gentleman smoking a pipe at his side, stood at the door to the wheel-house. “Thought you ought to meet the pilot, sir. Pilot Randall, Captain Thomas Paxton, Paxton Shipping Lines.”

“Pleased to have you aboard, Pilot,” Tom said, shaking Randall's hand. “Any problems I need to know about?”

“None to speak of. Wind'll back around to the north or nor'west by noon, or I miss my guess. Should have a fairly easy run to Pilottown.”

“Good. Mr. Larkin, if you'll be so kind as to call me when you're ready to cast off?”

“Aye, sir. Shouldn't be long now.”

The captain's quarters was a ten-by-twelve cabin astern, furnished with a bunk, a pair of captain's chairs, and a mahogany table that served double duty as a desk. The walls were lined with cabinets, and also held a small-arms rack and a chart locker. Tom stowed his bag beneath his bunk and, ducking to avoid the hurricane lamp suspended overhead, sat behind the desk to look over the charts Larkin had set out. The one for the channel to the gulf lay on top, but since the pilot would be in control during that part of the voyage, Tom set it aside. Next came a general map of the Caribbean, already marked by Larkin with a suggested course to San Sebastian. More detailed charts followed. Tom scanned them in turn and then picked the one detailing the approach to their first destination.

Barataria, Laffite's stronghold and Tom's last chance to buy cannon, lay on the gulf coast to the south and west of New Orleans. The settlement was accessible from New Orleans by bayou, but not in a vessel the size of the
Cassandra
, even with her centerboard drawn up completely. Tom calculated quickly for the dozenth time. A day to Pilottown at the mouth of the Mississippi. A night in the gulf and, with luck, an arrival at Barataria by the next evening. If all went well, they'd be on their way to San Sebastian by the end of the week.

“You in there, Tom?” The door opened and Maurice stuck his head into the cabin. “Those men we talked about yesterday just came aboard. You want to meet 'em before we sail?”

Tom sighed and folded the Barataria chart. “I guess I'd better. What do you think of them?”

Maurice grinned. “I'm damned if I'd want to tangle with 'em, but you can judge for yourself.” The grin disappeared, replaced by a look of concern. “You all right?”

“Sure,” Tom replied, a hint of venom in his voice. “Hell, no,” he corrected himself, edging past Maurice and heading for the deck, “but what does it matter?”

A quartet of some of the hardest cases Tom had seen in a long time waited with Jamie Ragland near the mainmast. “They're ready to sign on soon as you talk to 'em,” Ragland said, gesturing with a ledger toward the four. “Boys, this is Tom Paxton, the captain of the
Cassandra
. Tom, this first one's August Benet. There's a price on his head from New York City north into Canada. The posters say for murder, but I wouldn't ask for details, was I you.”

Benet, a tall, fair-skinned Frenchman whose smile had all the warmth of a winter night, stepped forward. He looked wiry, very trim, and his eyes were those of a mercenary. If men could be likened to blades, Benet was a stiletto. “
Bonjour
,” he grunted, thrusting out his hand.

Tom nodded, smiled with approval at the strength of Benet's grasp. “You know how to handle a cannon?” he asked.

“
Mais oui
,” Benet answered shortly. “With cannons and beautiful widows, I have vast experience.”

“Very well,” Tom said, clearing his throat. “Welcome aboard.”

“Next is Jim Strickland,” Ragland continued. “He has a deep and abiding hatred for the English ever since he was pressed off an American vessel and spent six years as a gunner aboard a British frigate before being released.”

Strickland was swarthy and solid, wide-shouldered and compact, with a face of which the most striking feature was a battered lump of cartilage that served as a nose. “Cap'n,” he grunted.

“Can you sail?” Tom asked.

“Not as good as I can shoot,” Strickland said, “but good enough to help when needed.”

“Good enough for me,” Tom said, shaking his hand. “Welcome aboard.”

“Third one's Tom Fairleigh,” Ragland went on. “He looks a little worse for wear 'cause he tried to clean out the Cottonmouth last night.”

Fairleigh wore a blood-caked stocking cap. His hands were swollen and cut, his great muscle-knotted arms black with bruises. “Came damned close to it, too,” he mumbled through split lips.

“Better luck next time,” Tom said, with a sidelong glance at Maurice. “Can you shoot a cannon as well as you clean out bars?”

“Take a crab out of a sea gull's beak at a quarter mile, sir.”

Tom gingerly shook the big man's hand. “Hope you don't have to,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

“Last one here is Topaz,” Ragland concluded. “He's a Carib.”

Dark-skinned and slightly built, Topaz was impeccably dressed from the waist up in a frock coat, elaborately stitched waistcoat, and beaver skin top hat. From his waist down, he wore nothing but a tattered and frayed pair of loose shorts. The effect, ludicrous at first glance, was on a more studied appraisal altogether ominous, especially when he grinned and revealed his teeth, which had been filed to points. “Good morning, suh,” Topaz said, tipping his hat and bowing shallowly. “Most pleased to make your acquaintance, suh!”